Read What You Wish For for Free Online

received the new scripts, and were often surprised to discover they were suddenly a lesbian, a serial killer, eloping, cuckolded, dead, or sometimes all of the above in a Very Special Episode.
    My frown returned. Freya might have been right. “Roxy is developing an alcohol problem.”
    “Oh.”
    There weren’t many awkward silences between us, but this was one.
    “Arthur was an endearing drunk,” Justine tried. “And they remade it!”
    “Stop. I’m one step away from Aunt Sassy.” I sighed.
    “No, c’mon,” she protested. “You’re hot.”
    “Remember the steamy days?” In my first years on Pulse Roxy slept with everyone . “The torrid affair with the head of surgery? The seduction of the billionaire Chairman of the Board who I left tattered in a cutthroat divorce? Those were good plots.” Both actors had left the show to become leading men in features.
    “That was some good bed hair,” Justine recalled her art. “But I liked Roxy-in-Danger best. The time you were kidnapped by that deranged patient, or the time you were exposed to a rare tropical illness.”
    “It was all passion and danger once.” I sighed.
    “You had sex with the environmentalist in Episode 904.”
    “Those sex scenes were as edgy as bunny slippers. We shared an ice cream sundae first. In an ice cream parlor! No wonder they’re giving me a drinking problem.” Justine giggled. “In the past two years, I’ve only done the bed boogie with well-meaning social workers and earnest cops. And never on camera. Where are the bodice-ripping scenes in the on-call room with tormented medical geniuses?”
    We both knew the answer. Younger actresses got all the porn. My shrinking story lines centered on heartwarming psychological dramas—saving an abused child; counseling a troubled veteran; and the occasional illegal, but sympathetic, assisted suicide.
    “At least you’re having imaginary off-camera sex,” Justine comforted. “Look at Miho.”
    Miho was an actress a year or two older than me. Hard to say in Hollywood years. Miho’s character had been crushed by an out-of-control ambulance crashing through the ER, leaving her in a wheelchair. We expected a poignant death scene any script now.
    “Miho shouldn’t have slept with the supervising producer then dumped him,” I said. “Do you think I need to worry, Justine?”
    She reassured me with the cardinal rule of a long-running series. “You don’t need to worry until they give you a child old enough to talk.”
    Sex, intrigue, marriage, divorce, pregnancy, murder, even the occasional return from the dead were all staples of prime-time drama. But if a pregnancy resulted in a living child who wasn’t stolen from the maternity ward or given up for adoption, it was jumping the shark. If it was a precocious black kid between five and ten years old, you might as well start sending out your resumé.
    “Alcoholism could be fun! You can disgrace yourself at the office Christmas party and have lots of ill-chosen sex partners.” Justine tried to cheer me.
    “We can only hope.” I wasn’t optimistic. Substance abuse wasn’t funny or appealing. No one wanted to watch it, and I didn’t want to parody real pain. The industry was rife with addiction, and I knew its ugly face well. I hoped Roxy would recognize she had a problem after very few scenes at our Brewmeisters. Maybe the writers could throw in an affair with the rehab counselor.
    “So I got this script,” I ventured.
    Justine perked up. “The movie about the hikers who end up in an Iranian jail?”
    “I passed on that.”
    “You did?”
    “I would’ve had to miss sweeps week.”
    “I’m surprised Clyde wouldn’t write you out.”
    The producer had been happy to write me out, but I’d been too nervous my absence wouldn’t make a difference and they’d notice.
    “Was it that one about living on Mars . . .”
    “It’s for Julian Wales’s next movie.” I interrupted her recital of projects I’d turned down. The